I have a number of pencil pieces of art I am selling this time around. I did these pieces for myself to do more pencil work and practice texture and detailing. These are all listed on this webpage with the sizes and prices. There is a Paypal button for each as well. These are one-of-a-kind pieces of art, so if you see something you like, don’t hesitate too long– it may be gone when you return. Thanks so much for looking and for your continued support of my work. Thank you also, to those of you who have sent your condolences on the passing of my wife Denise’s dad.

LOS ANGELES, CA—March 1, 2013— Dave Dorman’s “Dorothy Daydreams” original painting will be included in the upcoming Creature Features Visions of Oz gallery art show being held at the Heritage Square Museum in Los Angeles, California from March 3 – 31. Dorman’s painting, rendered traditionally in oil and acrylic mediums, is a visual homage to the L. Frank Baum literary classic Oz books.

Said Dorman, “It was an honor to be invited to participate in this tribute. For Dorothy Daydreams, I returned to the spirit of L. Frank Baum’s young protagonist, capturing some of her desire to escape the harsh and desolate reality of her Kansas dustbowl farm for the fantasy of a much more colorful, imaginary world.” Dorman will be showing the art progressives from pencil illustration to final painting this weekend on this blog.

Creature Features curated this multimedia exhibit, showcasing more than 100 works from a diverse group of artists. The collection includes illustrations, paintings, sculptures and full-sized recreations of favorite Oz characters. Also included in the exhibit will be historical memorabilia such as rare editions of the original L. Frank Baum books, props, concepts and artwork from various Oz-themed film & TV projects and many more surprises.

Eisner, Inkpot and Bram Stoker Award-winning illustrator, writer and creator Dave Dorman was voted the #1 Star Wars Artist of All Time by fans of the property worldwide, and his art book Star Wars: The Art of Dave Dormanwas an international bestseller. His landmark, critically acclaimed graphic novel, Aliens: Tribes, won him an Eisner and Bram Stoker Award as well as changing the way the publishing ad entertainment industries viewed the medium. Dorman’s own critically acclaimed Intellectual Property, The Wasted Lands—the Sergio Leone-meets-motorcycle western epic tale of good vs. evil in a dystopian society recovering from “the Iron Wars”–continued to raise the bar in the graphic novel publishing arena and set a new standard. Another Dorman I.P., Dead Heat, is the Bram Stoker Award-winning horror anthology of his tales of the protagonist motorcycle zombie known as “Hitch.” Dorman’s autobiography, Rolling Thunder: The Art of Dave Dorman (IDW Publishing/Desperado Publishing) encompasses an estimated one-third of his illustrious art career, which includes licensed works of such classic properties as G.I. Joe, Indiana Jones, Predator, Robotech, Batman, Captain America, Spiderman, Judge Dredd, Transformers, Green Lantern, Green Hornet, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Magic: The Gathering, Dungeons & Dragons, World of Warcraft and many more. Corporate clients include 20th Century Fox, Rhythm & Hues, Hasbro, Wizards of the Coast, Marvel, DC, Dark Horse, Image, IDW, Upper Deck, Topps, FASA Corp., and many more.

Dorman is a sought-after instructor who has taught at American Academy of Art, Savannah College of Art & Design, Reverie (Massive Black/ConceptArt.org), Columbia College and The Gnomon School. His video art tutorials are available at The Gnomon Workshop.

San Francisco, CA and Chicago, IL– April 11, 2012—Max Toy Company CEO Mark Nagata is pleased to announce his first-ever collaboration with Eisner and Inkpot Award-winning artist Dave Dorman, and Dave Dorman’s seven-year-old son Jack Dorman. This also marks the first time Max Toy Co. has collaborated with a father-and-son team, but according to Nagata, “Dave’s son Jack has already exhibited some uncanny art chops, so this unique team will make for a way cool monster design. Add Dave’s passion for Japanese monsters and his design sense to the mix, and I know this toy will be a best seller.” Nagata, who named his own company after his own son, understands the power of the father-son creative connection.

Said Dorman, “I am honored to be working with Mark. I’ve been a fan of his toys for a long time and attended his Toy Karma exhibit at Rotofugi here in Chicago. I am equally excited to be working with my son Jack on this project, whose early passion for Domos has evolved into a fascination with Kaiju, in no small part thanks to Max Toy Company’s wonderful Japanese monster toys. This will be one of the most fun and memorable projects I’ve had the good fortune to do.”

A legendary, beloved figure in the comic book industry often characterized as “one of the nicest guys in comics,” Eisner and Inkpot Award-winning artist Dave Dorman was voted the #1 Star Wars Artist of All Time by the fans ; George Lucas owns more than 90 of Dave Dorman’s original oil paintings. Dorman has created art for every major publisher and licensed character within the worlds of science fiction, fantasy and horror, including but not limited to Batman, Conan the Barbarian, Planet of the Apes, King Kong, Spiderman, Buckaroo Banzai, Captain America, G.I. Joe, Green Hornet, Green Lantern, Indiana Jones, Harry Potter, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Lord of the Rings, Alien, Predator, Alien v. Predator, World of Warcraft, Magic: The Gathering, Dungeons and Dragons, and many more.

Dorman has been a featured guest many times at San Diego Comic-Con where he exhibits yearly in Booth #4500 and he is exhibiting this weekend at C2E2 Table I-10. Dorman is also an exhibitor at Star Wars Celebration shows. Dorman’s own I.P., Steampunk motorcycle western The Wasted Lands, is relaunching in 2012. Dorman’s biography and career retrospective book, ROLLING THUNDER: THE ART OF DAVE DORMAN (IDW/Desperado Publishing) is available on Amazon. Dorman’s pencil illustration and traditional oil painting tutorials are available through Hollywood’s The Gnomon Workshop.

Over the years Mark Nagata has collected thousands of toys and a fair amount of titles. The man behind San Francisco-based Max Toy Company is widely known as: Toy Collector. Illustrator. Magazine Founder/Publisher. Toy Designer. Artist. Author. Husband. Father. But the one description that might fit best is an unofficial one – Kaiju Toy and Art Ambassador.

In the Japanese-inspired art and toy area, as well as throughout the larger toy collecting community, Mark is welcomed and recognized for his personal passion and commitment to supporting artists all around the world and the unique works they create. Mark’s devotion to presenting collectors with a selection of original figures inspired by classic Japanese toys from the 1960s and ’70s as well as new versions of licensed Japanese characters is at the heart of Max Toy Company. Named for his son, Max Toys specializes in custom and limited editions of “kaiju” (Japanese monsters) toys and artwork.

Through Max Toys, Mark, who trained at the Academy of Art College in San Francisco and honed his skills as a freelance commercial illustrator, has taken great pains to widen the reach of his two passions – toys and art. He has helped curate successful art shows throughout the U.S., as well as in Japan and Spain. His artwork and toy designs have been included in numerous books and magazines and his hand-painted custom toys have even been sold through prestigious art houses Philip De Pury and Christie’s in New York and London. The San Francisco resident and his art can also be spotted in the first volume of the “ToyPunks” DVD and the “Toys R Us” DVD, while the video for Owl City’s number one song “Fireflies” features Mark’s popular Kaiju Eyezon character. In 2010, Mark served as guest lecturer on kaiju and the toy-making process at the Morikami Museum in Florida. While young readers still enjoy his colorful style that graces more than 40 cover paintings for R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps book series – Give Yourself Goosebumps, adults are now snatching up Mark’s toy and artwork with a collector’s zeal, helping to spread the kaiju toy movement worldwide.

It’s time to announce the #2 Giclee in my year-long 30th Anniversary Limited Edition Series. This exclusive set of celebration prints commemorates my 30 years as a professional artist, showing milestones in my artistic career. For more general information on this series please see my previous blog announcing it byclicking here… I thank Hisstank.com for picking up the story as well. That was really great. G.I. Joe Fans, if you’re not on that site already, you need to know about it.

In case you didn’t read my last blog entry, this paragraph recaps the back story on my involvement with Hasbro and G.I. Joe:

Beginning in the mid 1980s, I started working for Hasbro as a freelancer for their R&D Department. I was hired to create paintings of their characters, in development for toys, to be rendered realistically as if they were real people. This assignment was perfect for me, as I love to work on figures and challenge myself to translate the toy designs as they might look if you saw them on the battlefield. These works were to be used as presentation pieces to the Board of Directors to help them choose which characters got produced as actual toys.

For the first wave of figures, I was told to concentrate on the character with very little background added. I did about 12 of these during that set. In the next wave, I was asked to add a proper looking background to the figures. This helped place the figure and give it more context and realism. I continued to do that for the rest of the art done for Hasbro, until the early 1990s. I produced around a hundred paintings for them and it was a very fun run.

For 30th Anniversary Limited Edition Giclee #2, I have chosen the COBRA Night Viper as my representative art for this time period in my career, because it has always been one of my favorite GI JOE paintings. This was one of the first I did featuring the full background, with the color and atmosphere of the piece really giving a great feel of stealth and character.

COBRA Night Viper by Dave Dorman

Like all prints in this series, this one will be issued in extremely Limited Edition Giclee’s of 30 copies, each signed and numbered by me, Dave Dorman. Each will have a special embossing on the print in the bottom right corner and also come with a Certificate of Authenticity. The price is $30.00 including free shipping in the US, an additional $18 for shipping outside the US. Please click here to order this print….http://www.davedorman.com/30thprint.shtml

Next month’s featured print hint: “If Adventure Has a Name….”

For those of you following Ghost Rider creator Gary Friedrich’s situation, no matter which side of it you’re on, he’s a fellow artist and human being, and he’s hurting and needs our help. To help Gary, our friend Steve Niles created an online fund-raiser to help with geting up on his mortgage and medical bills; if you’d like to help Gary, please click here: http://www.steveniles.com/gary.html

Gianni is a special needs child who needs costly therapy and an iPad to help with that therapy, so please click on http://giannispad.com if you can help him. I contributed an Artist Proof of my Darth Vader’s Persuasion of the Outer Rim to help with that, and I know our friend Alex Rosshas contributed this original Batman piece as well, so please bid on all of the art to help our Gianni!

Bid on Alex Ross' Batman Art for Gianni Klauba!

I will be teaching how to draw Star Wars art in an afternoon workshop with Doug Klauba on February 25th at the Southwest Elementary School in Evergreen Park to raise funds for their PTA. For those of you who watch Big Bang Theory, let me know if you’ve spotted Doug’s artwork on the set yet?

In other teaching news, I will be presenting at the prestigious American Academy of Art(Alum include Douglas Klauba, Jill Thompson, Alex Ross) in Chicago on Wednesday, February 22, 2012. I was told by an organizer that the students have been stealing the posters off the walls that announce my lecture and include a low rez image of Lord Vader’s Persuasion of the Outer Rim, so I hope people actually find out about it and show up to see me.

I also want to let you know that I will be donating an original oil Star Wars painting to non-profit indie school Elgin Academy, and online bidding will start on March 1st. I am told one of their auction items is 2 tickets toSan Diego Comic-Con, which are impossible to get and were sold out during last year’s show already. If you’re in need of two five-day San Diego Comic-Con passes, you’ll want to keep an eye on this page. Those passes include a dinner with me in San Diego, if you don’t mind dining with a dedicated carnivore.

I thank you for poring over this rather lengthy message, but I had much to announce today. My next blog will be my interview with my friend Mark Nagata, who owns MaxToyCo.com, a wonderfully exclusive Japanese Monster Toys company.

Most of my fans know that during the mid-’80s to the early ’90s, I worked with Hasbro producing G.I. Joe artwork for their Research and Development Department. This art was done as presentation for the Board of Directors to determine whether any particular character would move forward to future production. My task was to paint the characters designed as 3 1/2″ toys to look like real fighting G.I. Joe characters. None of this work was meant for publication, however, over the years, fans and collectors have seen some of this art via the Web or fan club communications. (One of the future projects I am hoping to get off of the ground is a collection of all of this unseen artwork into a G.I. Joe/Hasbro art volume. I will keep you up to date on information as this project progresses.)

I have many fans contact me directly about the art I did during this period. Recently one of those fans asked if I’d be interested in recreating some of those pieces for his private collection. This is not something that I normally do, but this particular fan showed so much enthusiasm that I thought that it might be fun to see how I would approach these paintings almost 20 years later. I took on his commission for the three recreations and now I present to you one of them as an art progressive:

Pencil on Illustration Board Recreating the Character to Be Painted

Progressive #2:

The original landscape for this painting had a textured rock pattern that I applied with very thick gesso. I repeated that technique on this new board as well.

Progressive #3:

Here I start laying in some of the b/g colors, starting with the explosion in the mid left.

Progressive #4:

The b/g is almost complete at this point with the main figure clean so that when I add color to the figure, it will be unencumbered by underpainting.

Progressive #5:

After the b/g dries, I now lay in the underpainting for the basic colors of the figure.

Progressive #6:

Continuing similar to the previous photo, I lay in the rest of the colors for this figure.

Progressive #7:

With the basic tones being laid down in oils, I now begin the detail work with acrylics, starting with the head and moving downward.

Progressive #8:

Work continues with the acrylics, adding more detail to the body and his equipment.

Progressive #9:

At this point, I've completed some of the finer shadowing details and refinements with various shades of gray markers. You'll note final details on the ground and some color corrections for the background. The above is the finished piece.

This piece was 16″ x 20″ oil, acrylic and marker on gessoed illustration board. It is the exactly the same size as the original Hasbro artwork. If you have comments or questions about this piece, please feel free to post them here.

Many of my G.I. Joe fans have asked me about commission work or recreations. This is the first one I have ever done, and I did enjoy bringing back good memories of working with the artists and creators at Hasbro. I would certainly be happy to do more of this type of work if any of you are interested. Please feel free to email me directly at dormanart@yahoo.com or message me via Facebook

Thanks to all of you who have emailed or Tweeted or called today with birthday wishes. I stopped having birthdays at 39, but someone at AARP must’ve lost the memo. A special thank you to my G.I. Joe enthusiast/collector friend Joao, who even sent a special gift that arrived today that my whole family will enjoy. Joao came up from Florida to visit me last month and added some fun pieces to his G.I. Joe art collection:

My Friend, G.I. Joe Collector Joao Paredes

Last week I did a demonstration at Blick Art Supply in Wheaton, IL (a special thanks to Kevin Sandstrom for arranging this for me) during which I started a Boba Fett painting. I decided to do continue with the live painting demo during the Detroit show last weekend and the fans really liked seeing me work, so that was gratifying. Here is the painting I did (below), already purchased by a collector:

Star Wars' Boba Fett by Dave Dorman 9-2011

I was very happy to get my copy of STAR WARS: COMICS by Abrams Publishing this week. Here’s a picture of me with my new book:

Dave Dorman Star Wars Art on Cover of New Abrams Publishing Book

I want to remind everyone that next weekend, October 8-9, I will be at the Dallas Star Wars Fan Days Show and I hope to see many of you there. My friend Jose from Puerto Rico will even be attending, so it’s really pulling people from all over and should be a great show.

On Monday, October 10th, I will be attending the fund-raiser for my favorite horror theater group, WildClaw Theatre. If you can join me there, that would be great. Here’s a link: http://bit.ly/qESwCT If you can afford to support amazing horror performances, please contribute to them.

WildClaw Theater is still asking for people to turn in their 10-minute horror plays for DEATHSCRIBE 2011, their annual international competition. If you’ve never attended this event, it’s a must-see. Chicago actors perform each winning play live on stage like an old timey radio show, with a foley artist, etc. It’s one of the most entertaining events I attend and I look forward to it every year. A special thanks to my friend Charlie Athanas for introducing me to WildClaw Theater.

It was Charlie Athanas who gave me the heads up that my KLOUT.com score was at 70 this past week, which was higher than Trent Reznor’s or Olivia Munn’s. Mind you, I have no illusions that I’m a bigger household name than either of those pop culture luminaries, but it just goes to show you the power of social media. It is all due to the tenacious hard work of my wife’s PR firm, WriteBrain Media, who handles all of my social media and PR for me.

I want you see my friends who are wearing purple today, that started (for me, anyhow) as a FaceBook initiative honoring those young adults whose lives have been lost from bullying, especially gay, lesbian and transgender friends. Here’s me wearing my purple shirt: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JApeCDgR7d4

I have asked my friends and fans to join me today in wearing purple. These are my friends Rhea Cutler and Gregory Canales, who sent me their images. Rhea Cutler and Gregory Canales, you are the best. Watch today for more of my friends to post their pictures in purple on my blog.